Emerging Technology winners hit the headlines
One of the prize winners in the Materials category of our Emerging Technologies Competition received widespread media coverage for their innovative development of biomaterials for dental treatment.
Instead of acting as a dental filling, the materials could be placed in direct contact with the pulp tissue inside the tooth, stimulating the stem cells to repair and regenerate one of the tooth’s layers.
“We hope to eventually encourage dentin regeneration”, explained Dr Adam Celiz, Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, whose team developed the technology. “Dentin is the protective layer that sits on top of the pulp tissue. It acts as a barrier between the enamel and the soft tissue that contains nerves, blood vessels and cells.
“Our multidisciplinary team of chemists, engineers and dentists have designed synthetic materials to stimulate a stem cell population already found within the pulp tissue to ultimately restore the dentin.
“We are essentially aiming to encourage components of teeth to regenerate themselves.”
The Emerging Technologies Competition is our annual innovation competition, aimed at accelerating the commercialisation of research taking place in universities and small companies. The University of Nottingham team was chosen as a prize winner from a shortlist of 40 finalists, who presented their ideas to a panel of expert judges at our recent Chemistry Means Business event.
The story was covered by news outlets around the world, including the Washington Post, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and CBS News, and in a range of online publications including CNET, Newsweek, Popular Science and Independent Online.
Dr Steve Pleasance, head of industry at the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “I’m pleased to see that this work from the University of Nottingham has received such widespread attention – I feel that this novel, therapeutic dental biomaterial has significant potential in the dental materials market, and I look forward to seeing the eventual impact of the research.”
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